Hi Mario,
On Fri, 6 May 2011 17:56:41 +0200, Mario Fux <debian-ml@unormal.org> wrote:
> To regenerate the debian ISO I use the attached script (modified from [1]) and
> here is a short extract of the included commands:
Ah, I see, you're using the new clever "Just copy it to the stick" .ISO
Those images are built with xorriso, rather than genisoimage, which is
what makes it possible to boot from them like that (although others will
need to tell you exactly how that's done, since I've not tried doing
that yet).
You may find that you'd be better off using the old USB method, which is
to make a bootable USB stick with a FAT partition on it, and then put
the ISO image in that partition as a file.
The simple way of doing this is to unzip the boot.img.gz you can find
via this link: http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst#verysmall by
selecting the architecture you need, then hd-media. If you want to vary
the size of the filesystem on the stick, you'll need to recreate the file
system, as described in the "Flexible way" section here:
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/ch04s03.html
Either way, making a USB stick like this has the advantage that the
preseed can then just be a file or set of files on the USB stick, which
makes them editable.
See mentions of USB on this page:
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apbs02.html#preseed-auto
If you want to do multi-file preseeding, with includes, you should note
the stuff about magic URLs with /./ in them, here:
http://hands.com/d-i/
So, if you want this fully automatic, I normally do that by adding an
option to the advanced menu (see adtext.cfg in the VFAT filesystem on
the USB stick you've created by this point) or the main menu (text.cfg)
specifying the preseed file as an extra kernel parameter, something
like:
label myautoinstall
menu label ^Dangerous Auto-Install, no questions asked
kernel linux
append vga=normal initrd=initrd.gz file=/hd-media/./preseed.cfg -- quiet
where the clever bit is the "file=/hd-media/./preseed.cfg" which makes D-I
look in the root of the USB stick for a file called preseed.cfg
Once you've got that setup, you can tweak the preseed.cfg to your
heart's content without needing to remaster CDs all the time (which gets
tiresome _very_ quickly indeed).
BTW I like to have a git repository on my USB sticks for tracking the
changes to preseeds, since that allows you to easily push changes back
to somewhere else, and then suck them down onto another stick later.
HTH
Cheers, Phil.
--
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